


The Virgin

by 1pinkunicorn2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 13:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1pinkunicorn2/pseuds/1pinkunicorn2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John thinks that Sherlock is a virgin and that sex scares him. He suspects he hasn’t had any kind of relationship either. Unable to contain his curiosity, he decides to ask Sherlock about this. But the answers might not be what he’s expecting...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Virgin

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This story is written for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> A/N: Please let me know what you think!

Before he knew Sherlock, John had never knowingly met a virgin over the age of thirty. But, of course, Sherlock was something different. He kept severed heads in his fridge, knew about forty-something different kinds of tobacco ash and – when he was bored – had the charming habit of shooting walls. It was safe to say Sherlock was not your average man.

So it didn’t really surprise John, per se, to learn that Sherlock had never explored the more intimate human passions. He didn’t expect that it was something that would interest Sherlock tremendously. But there was something else, something that was a little more disconcerting.

John couldn’t help but think that Sherlock was _afraid_ of sex, and that really did surprise him. Because if a man could fearlessly interact with dangerous psychopaths (albeit possibly being one himself) and risk taking a poisonous pill, surely he wouldn’t find the idea of losing his virginity too daunting.

Sherlock, it seemed, did.

John decided, one quiet Monday morning, to attempt to broach the subject. Sherlock had just solved a case so hadn’t quite had enough time to become agitated about having no work. On this particular morning, he was lazily sprawled on the sofa, his eyes closed.

“Sherlock, can I ask you something?” He wanted to begin gently. There was no need to alarm him.

“You just did,” came the annoying, half-interested reply.

John sighed. “I’ll take that as a yes then.” He took a deep breath. “Have you ever...been with anyone?”

Sherlock opened his eyes and sat up a little. He paused before replying. “Define ‘been with.’”

“I don’t know. You ever dated anyone? Had a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Fooled around at uni? Whatever.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. John couldn’t tell whether it was curiosity or annoyance. Maybe a bit of both. “You’re not being very specific,” he said, looking away.

“Well, okay. Let’s start with something definite. Ever kissed anyone?”

“You know I have,” said Sherlock quickly. He was stretching his arms up lazily. He yawned.

“Yeah, but I mean kissed and meant it. You know, a proper snog,” said John. He had actually amazed himself. He couldn’t quite believe that he was having this conversation with Sherlock.

“Snog...” Sherlock pushed his hands together and rested them under his chin. He seemed to be thinking. In a sudden movement, he turned to John. “Why are you asking?”

“Let’s just call it an experiment. I’ll bet you’ve deduced why I’m doing it anyway.”

Sherlock lips were slightly parted, and he was fluttering his eyelids a little. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but John thought he looked a little pink. Was he embarrassed? “I suppose I might have had a, quote on quote, snog,” he said, without looking at John.

“Yeah? With who?” John was getting a little excited now. He was curious. Sherlock never normally discussed things like this. He was going to milk this for all it was worth.

“With whom,” Sherlock corrected pedantically.

John raised his eyebrows. “Trying to dodge the question, are we?”

“No,” said Sherlock. “Simply correcting what is a frustratingly common grammatical mistake.”

“Stop avoiding the question, Sherlock,” said John firmly. No way was he going to let this opportunity pass him up. “Who? How many?”

“A couple of people,” Sherlock admitted. He pulled himself into a sitting position on the couch, reaching his hands so that he touched his toes, before straightening.

“Oh, yeah? And who were they?” asked John eagerly.

“A few...” Sherlock reddened, bit his lip. “It was at my university. It was a very long time ago. I don’t consider any of my ventures in that direction to have been a success.”

“Ventures in what direction?” Was this going where he thought it was going?

Sherlock was definitely a bit flushed now. He might even have been blushing. “Well...” He stopped himself and changed track. “What does it matter? This is of no importance.” He spoke more confidently. It was like he was glad to be off the subject.

“It’s just curiosity,” said John casually. “And we’re friends. Why can’t we just talk about things for the sake of it?”

Sherlock eyed him resentfully. “What is the point of talking about something as pointless as who slept with who however long ago? I’ve never wasted my time asking you about something similarly pointless.”

“But you’re happy to bore me numb talking about tobacco ash and perfume,” said John. “Maybe this is what I want to talk about. Couldn’t you talk about what I’m interested in for a change?”

Sherlock sighed. “Oh, John. You do so like to romanticise things. No doubt this will be up on that ridiculous blog of yours. And what will you call it? _Sherlock Holmes’ Bedfellows_ or some such nonsense,” he said, scoffing. As he spoke, he swung his legs from the sofa to the floor.

John was affronted. “I wouldn’t write about this on my blog. This a totally private conversation between two friends.” He went a little sulky. “I thought you trusted me more than that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock had been staring the floor. When John said this, he looked up sharply. “Trust you?” For some reason, he smiled. “John, you are quite possibly the most transparent man who has ever walked the planet. Trust is not really a concern with you.”

John wasn’t sure whether he should feel offended or flattered. When Sherlock said things, both feelings could be appropriate – or neither. “Well, that means you know I’m telling the truth. So you can let me know.”

“What if I have no wish to divulge such tedious information?” Sherlock shot back. He was leaning towards John now, and his thin shoulders were hunched.

“Because it’s interesting – to me at least,” said John. He reciprocated Sherlock’s gesture by leaning forward. Their faces were closer now. “So, come on. Who’d you snog?”

“If I told you, you’d say that I was lying,” said Sherlock, slinking back under John’s gaze.

“Try me.”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “Very well. I’ll cater to your ridiculous fascination – since I’ve nothing better to do.” At this, he glowered at John. John simply looked at him, waiting.

“When I was at university, I did pursue a...relationship,” said Sherlock. The final word uttered with a sneer. “Within the context of that relationship there was a certain degree of physical intimacy.”

When John realised that he had stopped talking, he said, “Is that it? Come on, Sherlock. That’s not an answer.” He levelled his gaze with Sherlock’s, refusing to let him avoid eye contact.

Sherlock seemed reluctant to reply. He sat, gazing at the floor, saying nothing. His thin hands tugged briefly at his dressing gown, before returning to his side. He pouted slightly, then glanced up at John.

“Sherlock, why don’t you just tell me, huh?” said John.

Sherlock seemed to pull himself out of a trance. He shook his head, seeming to clear his mind. “I’ve just told you.”

“No, you haven’t. Who was it? Let me know that at least.”

Sherlock’s jaw tightened and he clenched his teeth together briefly. “No, John. I don’t see the relevance of this. Now if you don’t mind, I have perfume to test.” With those words he flounced off to the kitchen.

Defensive much? What was Sherlock hiding?

Several hours later, he found Sherlock bending over his microscope. Beside it were various pieces of lab equipment, some of which were filled with what was presumably the perfume he was testing. He did not look up when John came in.

He worked deftly, adjusting the lens where appropriate and sometimes breaking off to take notes. He bit his lip in concentration. Now wasn’t a good time to interrupt, so John just sat there with his hands in his lap.

Several minutes passed in complete silence – apart from Sherlock’s occasional shuffle to write something down or the click when he adjusted the lens. John looked at his watch and broke the silence by sighing. Sherlock glanced at him briefly, before returning to his work.

“Going well?” John asked hopefully.

“Tolerable,” was the reply.

“Right, okay,” said John, rubbing his thighs awkwardly. A heavy silence fell over them again.

John couldn’t help but wonder who Sherlock had...been with. Had he even been with anyone? Or had John misread the situation? Sherlock had seemed to imply it, but perhaps he hadn’t realised the connotations of ‘physical intimacy’. After all, he didn’t know the earth went around the sun.

“It was my professor.”

The words were said so suddenly that John was caught off guard. “Sorry, what?”

“You asked who it was. I’ve told you,” said Sherlock, not even glancing up from his experiment.

This was a bit much for John to take in. “Sorry, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” He was sure that his voice made his amazement completely obvious.

“You know perfectly well what I’m saying, John.” No trace of a blush now. He looked the same as he always did: brow furrowed, a look of concentration evident on his face.

“You...snogged...your professor?”

“Yes.” Sherlock was inscrutable.

“You...had some kind of relationship with h...them.” He realised that he had no idea whether it would be a man or a woman.

“That’s...” Sherlock cleared his throat. “Accurate, I suppose.”

John’s eyes widened. “You...” Somehow he felt scared to ask it. Now that it came to it, he wondered if he should just leave it. But the words came out of his mouth before he was really able to stop them. “You had sex with them?”

“Yes.” Sherlock’s tone was remarkably matter-of-fact. Unlike John, he seemed completely unfazed.

John, on the other hand, had not been expecting that. Hearing Sherlock say it – particularly when he said it so calmly – was slightly too much to take in. He could believe many things of Sherlock. But this? Somehow it didn’t seem to fit. It felt like it was someone else’s past, someone else’s background.

“How long?” he said dumbly.

“About a year,” said Sherlock crisply.

John was stunned. A year?

“Ah!” He quickly scribbled down a note, muttering something about the composition of some particular perfume. John didn’t understand a word of it.

“What happened?” asked John, ignoring Sherlock’s distraction.

“I don’t know what you mean.” He still didn’t look at John directly.

“I mean ‘how did it end?’” John wondered if Sherlock really hadn’t understood or if he were being deliberately obtuse.

“Oh.” Sherlock was slightly absent. “I finished university.”

Was that really how that kind of relationship ended? “You...didn’t report them?”

“What for?”

“Well, you know...for breaking professional boundaries, abuse of power – all that stuff.” John spoke calmly, but his mind was a whirlwind. Could this really be Sherlock he was talking to about this? Or was this some kind of alternate universe?

“No.” Sherlock rose from his seat to put two containers by the sink, before returning to his former sitting position.

Watching him, John wondered how far things had gone. Had Sherlock ended things or had the professor? He wasn’t even going to try and figure out whether it had been a man or a woman. Had Sherlock been in love? Had he been using them?

He settled on asking, “Who ended things?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I left university. It was a natural ending.”

Did that mean that it had been a mutual decision? John couldn’t help but feel concerned about the whole thing. It seemed so wrong. Yet, there had been no emotion in Sherlock’s voice, no sign that talking about this pained him in any way. “You were happy for it to end?”

“More than happy. It was a frivolous distraction. By that time I had far more serious things to concern myself with.”

He was now sprinkling the perfume over a piece of card and John smiled to himself. Yeah, Sherlock had far more important things to do. “Why did you start it in the first place?”

Sherlock stiffened slightly. “It was a...an experiment,” he said.

John snorted. “Really?” he said, unconvinced. Then he turned serious. “Sherlock, that kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen.”

“Oh, yes. One of those law things, isn’t it?”

John smiled at that. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Hmm...” Sherlock drummed his fingers on the table. John imagined he was concentrating more on the perfume than this conversation. Typical of him really.

There was silence for a few minutes. John sat pondering everything he’d just been told. The man sitting in front of him somehow seemed very different in the light of all these revelations. The idea of Sherlock having any kind of relationship had been completely alien to John before now.

So what was it that kept him from ever pursuing one again? Had he tried it and simply disliked it? Had he been hurt? Once bitten, twice shy after all. Maybe he had been in the relationship for personal gain, to grant him more leeway to do as he pleased. There were too many possible motivations, and John didn’t really know what to think.

“Did you love them?” he asked.

For the first time, Sherlock abandoned his work and looked straight at John. “John, you know that anything akin to love completely opposes the – “

John interrupted him. “Did you love them?” he repeated.

Sherlock didn’t answer for a moment, but he held eye contact with John, never once looking down. “If love were something I ever admitted into my mind in any way, then I’d say...”

“That you loved them,” John finished.

A peculiar expression crossed Sherlock’s face. “That wasn’t what I was...” He stopped himself and began again. “Well...I suppose...” he said feebly.

John was amazed but tried to hide it. “It’s okay...I get it. I won’t ask anything else,” he muttered.

 It wasn’t like Sherlock to admit something like that. And somehow it didn’t seem entirely convincing. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt Sherlock wasn’t telling him something. He was probably lying.

Recovering himself, he cleared his throat and reached for an old tattered newspaper which lay on the table. “I’ll just...read this,” he said awkwardly.

“Of course,” said Sherlock, obviously not listening. He was still looking at John, who was starting to get a little unnerved.

“Is something wrong?” asked John.

Sherlock breathed sharply in through his nostrils, as if shaking himself from a daze. “No.”

“Okay.” John picked up his paper and began to read. Five minutes in, he glanced up and saw Sherlock was still looking at him. “Are you sure everything’s okay, Sherlock? You seem a bit...agitated.”

Sherlock frowned. “No, there’s nothing wrong.”

“Well, why do you keep staring at me? You’re going to give me a complex if you’re not careful,” John joked.

“Was I staring at you? Sorry, I was...thinking.” Sherlock moved his eyes back to the microscope and looked through the lens again.

“Well, could you do your thinking without making me your focus point? It’s...err...a bit unnerving.”

Sherlock didn’t reply to that, so John turned back to his newspaper. It was days old, and he’d already read most of the stories in it, but it was something to pass the time.

Later, he found himself waking up in the armchair and, checking his watch, realised he must have fallen asleep. He hadn’t even realised he’d been tired. Or maybe the paper had just been that boring. Opening his eyes fully, he saw that Sherlock was still in the room, sitting at his microscope.

But he wasn’t using it. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at it. He looked how John couldn’t remember ever seeing him look before. His shoulders were slumped and he was looking at the floor. He looked sad. Really sad.

Obviously, he hadn’t noticed that John was awake, and John was curious now, so he decided not to announce that he was awake. He shut his eyes halfway, trying to make it easier for himself to revert back to ‘sleeping’ if Sherlock turned round.

He did just that, and John shut his eyes before Sherlock could see he was awake.

“Ah, John, you’re awake.”

_Damn it._ John opened his eyes slowly. “Yeah,” he said, pulling himself into a sitting position. “I must have dozed off. Didn’t realise I was that tired.” Had Sherlock noticed John spying on him? Had he known all along?

If he had, he gave no indication of it. “Yes, you should go to bed an hour earlier. Your brain would function better if you got more sleep – necessary for someone with average brain power.”

“My brain’s functioning well enough to punch you,” said John, but there was no malice in his voice.

Sherlock smiled at that.

John didn’t know if it was his still sleep deprived brain that decided he should do this, but he approached the subject one more time. There was just one more thing he wanted to know. “Sherlock, if you loved them why did you end it?” He didn’t explain, but they both knew what he was talking about.

“Why would love make something work?” said Sherlock. He pronounced the word ‘love’ with a sneer. “And who said anything about love?”

“You did,” said John. “At least I thought that was what you were trying to say, that you were in love with...”

“Oh...yes...right...Well, I suppose I was...” Sherlock was stammering. He seemed to have suddenly become very flustered. “But,” he said, composing himself a little and looking John straight in the eyes. “Love isn’t always returned.”

Unrequited love. That was what he’d been missing. The sadness. The awkwardness around the subject. Everything. It fit. He knew what unrequited love felt like; he’d been through it himself. He remembered all the girls he’d wanted to go out with in school, all the times they’d gone for other guys.

“Yeah, that hurts,” he thought out loud.

Sherlock regarded him with the same peculiar expression that he’d worn before. “Yes...” Looking in Sherlock’s eyes, John thought he looked hurt. Was it something _he’d_ said? Or was he just remembering his relationship (or whatever it had been) with the professor?

“Look, Sherlock, if you still wanted to, you could find someone. I mean people find their...soul mates at all ages.” He nodded towards Sherlock, unsure why he was saying this. “You could.”

“And what exactly does ‘soul mate’ mean?” he said coldly.

“Someone who accepts you with all your faults, someone who loves you unconditionally, someone you trust. I guess it just means that they’d never give up on you, no matter how much you irritated them. And they’d always forgive you, no matter what you’d done.” John had surprised himself. That actually sounded rather poetic.

Sherlock looked him straight in the eyes. For a few seconds he was silent. When he spoke it was with his usual coldness. “Yes, that sounds lovely, John. But I don’t need someone like that, and I’m certainly not looking for them. In fact, I’d avoid them if they came along.” With that, he left the room.

John chuckled to himself. He was sort of relieved. Sherlock seemed to be almost back to normal.

Almost. Sherlock had looked at him so strangely, and some of the things he’d said about the professor hadn’t seemed...right. Somehow he got the sense he was missing something. But he’d probably never guess what –  even it were right under his nose the whole time...


End file.
